JEWISH WOMEN played a prominent role in the spread of feminism.

The significant presence of Jews in the movement is not surprising. Indeed, their zeal for feminism was a natural reaction to the misogyny inherent in the sacred Jewish texts of the Talmud. Just as Jewish capitalism, or the unleashing of the profit motive on society, bred the reaction of Jewish communism and its dream of economic equality, so Jewish disdain for women naturally bred the reaction of Jewish-led feminism and the extreme denial of essential differences between the sexes.

Underneath these polar opposites is a common thread: a dissatisfaction with the natural order and a restless desire to topple it.

Tragically, Jewish-influenced feminism was imposed on a society that did not historically possess the same views of women. As he walked and sailed through the lands of ancient Palestine, Jesus Christ did not disdain women. He healed them, he reasoned with them, he reproached them, he loved them. His mother stood at the foot of the cross, unafraid of Jewish retribution. The first person who saw him rise from the dead was a woman. The Catholic Church later exalted women in their feminine roles. It even offered an honored place for the non-married woman as a consecrated virgin. The birth of a girl was always celebrated every bit as much as the birth of a boy (except perhaps in cases where a king or nobleman wanted a male heir). No woman has been more revered than the Blessed Mother of God. Protestantism lessened this reverence and led to a commercialization of society that women would inevitably be pressured to join. Radical Protestants were the first promoters of feminism in this country. The difference between Protestant feminism and Jewish feminism was that the latter had financial fortunes behind it — and the Jewish talent for word games, for spinning the truth in a web of audacious sophistries that blast common sense to smithereens. It was no accident that Christian women writers were shunted from women’s magazines in the 1960s and replaced by Jewish women, whose every thought against men was broadcast throughout the land.

Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem were understandably dissatisfied and lacking in feminine pride. They did not come from a world that honored women and their varied abilities. They could not help, I suspect, of being jealous of the security of the Christian woman in her traditional place. This dissatisfaction was not the only motivation behind Jewish feminism, which was also a psychological weapon against non-Jewish society, but it surely accounts for some of the passion behind it.

Madonna and Child, Fillippo Lippi; 1465

— Comments —

Janice G. writes:

Parenthood was held in highest value throughout the ages until Capitalism turned that on its head. Now we are all the worse off because of the replacement of God and family with money, and there seems to be no end to our decline in sight.

My first thought on reading your very perceptive article is that I wish Jewish women (and men) had an inkling of the great joy that childless St. Joachim and St. Anne felt upon being told they would finally bring a child – a girl – into the world; that both husband and wife were astounded by the honor of knowing that their girl would bear the long-awaited Messias for their people and for the world. I wish Jewish men and women might accept what respect is owed to women as mothers, if not to Mary herself, whose Motherhood was the first of the greatest series of events in human history.

Laura writes:

Thank you.

Non-orthodox Jews generally reject the denigration of females, sometimes going to the other extreme.

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